Chemical Imaging and Analysis of Single Nerve Cells by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Imaging and Cellular Electrochemistry.

A nerve cell is a unit of neuronal communication in the nervous system and is a heterogeneous molecular structure, which is highly mediated to accommodate cellular functions. Understanding the complex regulatory mechanisms of neural communication at the single cell level requires analytical techniques with high sensitivity, specificity, and spatial resolution. Challenging technologies for chemical imaging and analysis of nerve cells will be described in this review.